No debate: ND facing Ohio State in Fiesta

Irish aim to break string of 7 successive bowl losses.

Irish aim to break string of 7 successive bowl losses.

December 05, 2005|ERIC HANSEN Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- For Brady Quinn, it's all about memories. Sunday's announcement that the Notre Dame football team would be playing Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl Jan. 2 in Tempe, Ariz., stirred up plenty of recollections, starting with the one of ND's 2004 season crashing and burning just a 20-minute drive from Sun Devil Stadium in the Insight Bowl. But it also evokes thoughts of how close the Notre Dame junior quarterback came to being a Buckeye and how he rooted for Ohio State while growing up in the Columbus suburbs. And it's also about creating new, more pleasant memories. "That's something that obviously needs to end," Quinn said of ND's string of seven successive bowl losses. Also possibly ending, or at least getting muffled significantly, Sunday was all the politicking and posturing, all the histrionics, all the twisted arguments and numbers over which teams the Bowl Championship Series should select for its two at-large entries. In the end, the BCS didn't have any choices to make. Both Notre Dame (9-2) and Ohio State (9-2) automatically qualified (along with six conference champions), though both were expected to be chosen anyway ahead of, most notably, Pac-10 runner-up Oregon (10-1). The Buckeyes, ranked fourth in the final BCS standings, benefited from the "Kansas State rule," in which an at-large team that finishes No. 3 or No. 4 is guaranteed entrance into the big-money bowl cartel. ND (9-2) meets the "top six requirement" applied to independents and members of non-BCS conferences (Sun Belt, Western Athletic, Mountain West, Mid-American and Conference USA). "After we beat Stanford (Nov. 26), making us BCS-eligible, a lot of people, commentators you'd hear say this or that about whether or not we were worthy of a BCS bid," Quinn said. "But obviously things worked out to where we ended up being one of those teams that got an automatic bid. We're where we should be, and everything seemed to work out in the end." Ohio State and Notre Dame will be meeting for just the fifth time ever, at 5 p.m. EST on Jan. 2 in the 73,752-seat Sun Devil Stadium. The Buckeyes swept a pair of regular-season games in 1995-96, with the Irish picking up a pair of wins in the mid-30s. Despite their paths rarely crossing on the field, there's plenty of intertwining in the schools' pasts and presents. Ohio State was one of the schools legendary Irish coach Knute Rockne threatened to bolt to in order to create the leverage to get the ND administration to build Notre Dame Stadium in the late 1920s. OSU athletic director Gene Smith played for Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine at Notre Dame in the '70s. Quinn's sister dates Ohio State linebacker A.J. Hawk, the Big Ten's Defensive Player of the Year. And the neighbors are constantly knocking heads in recruiting, even more so lately. After a recruiting lull in Ohio, Notre Dame under coach Charlie Weis has picked up the pace in the Buckeye State. True freshmen Kyle McCarthy and David Bruton, both second-string safeties, are Ohioans, as are three of the members of ND's 22-man recruiting class to date (defensive back Kallen Wade, defensive end John Ryan and wide receiver Robby Parris). The only scholarship upperclassmen on the Irish roster are Dublin Coffman high school teammates Chinedum Ndukwe and Quinn. "If I hadn't come to Notre Dame, Ohio State would have most likely been my second choice. Looking back over the recruiting process, after I committed to Notre Dame, Ohio State kind of kept recruiting me. Even after they won the (2002) national championship, they were trying to get me to take an official visit. "(But) when I first came here, there was a certain feeling that I got when I stepped on campus and walked around campus and went through the stadium and different parts of Notre Dame. I really got a feeling that this is where I saw myself the next four or five years. That's really what it came down to." And both Quinn and Weis said they envisioned this BCS possibility in fall camp, even coming off a dismal 2004 season in which coach Tyrone Willingham was purged and Quinn was written off as an overhyped recruit. "I think that they have picked us as one of the top eight teams in the country is a very rewarding feeling for those players as they've come a long way from walking off the field last year and ending up 6-6," Weis said via teleconference from North Carolina, where he was recruiting Sunday. He also planned to visit with close friend and Carolina Panthers coach John Fox during the trip and serve as the keynote speaker at the Bronko Nagurski awards banquet tonight. "But I know as rewarding as this year has been," Weis continued, "they do realize they have a formidable opponent ahead of them, and it's going to be a tough task. I think they're really looking forward to playing somebody the caliber of Ohio State." Staff writer Eric Hansen: ehansen@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6470